Fresh and salt waters are a key lifeline for all civilizations but at the same time can also threaten human habitats. Over the centuries, people have ventured out to navigate and explore the waters, while also putting systems in place to manage and control them. This has resulted in numerous categories of water-related maps such as portolan charts, maritime and river cartography, hydrographic surveys, VOC charts, polder maps etc. The workshop will offer a forum to discuss this rich variety in cartographic heritage.

Call for Papers

The organizers invite the submission of abstracts for oral presentations (25 minutes plus Q&A) focusing on the human interaction with water from a historical perspective.

Registration

The workshop is open to everyone with an interest in the history of cartography but requires participants to register. Registration will be open until the available seating is allocated and will be free of charge.

Besides its scientific programme, the symposium will also include a nice array of social events, namely an ice-breaker reception, a maps and rare books exhibit and reception at Christ Church Library, a guided tour of Oxford, a conference dinner and a full-day visit to nearby Blenheim Palace.

To explore the city, its surroundings and its cartographic heritage, optional technical and social tours are planned.

Call for Contributions

The organizers invite contributions (papers and posters) investigating the cartography of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas as influenced by cosmopolitan exploration and imperialistic activity during, but not limited to, the ‘long nineteenth century’ (mid-18th to mid-20th centuries). The rise of European hegemony coincided with a scientific turn that underpinned the evolution of topographic mapping andhydrographic charting, and led to the emergence of thematic mapping. These colonial cartographies brought forth a rich legacy of mapping that continues to influence the aesthetics and authority of mapmaking today.

Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2018

Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2018

As with previous international symposia the organizers plan to publish accepted and presented papers and posters in the ICA series “History of Cartography” by Springer (Heidelberg et al.); for the recently published Proceedings of the previous 6th International Symposium held in Dubrovnik in October 2016 please see www.springer.com/us/book/9783319615141

The emphasis of the special issue will be on how the first truly global and industrialized war helped to emerge new ways to capture survey data, speed up processing and printing and, last but not least, introducing significant map series. For that focus on technologies and resulting cartographic products, maps on diplomacy and propaganda are intentionally outside the scope of the special issue.

Alongside already solicited contributions the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography does invite expressions of interest by way of submitting brief abstracts on two categories of articles:

In conjunction with the 28th International Cartographic Conference, held in Washington DC on 2–7 July 2017 (http://icc2017.org/), the Library of Congress’ Geography & Map Division and the three ICA Commissions on the History of Cartography, Toponymy, and Atlases would like to invite you to attend their joint pre-conference Workshop Charting the Cosmos of Cartography: History – Names – Atlases.

The workshop will be held at the Library of Congress (Madison Building) in Washington DC (USA), from Wednesday, 28 June to Friday, 30 June 2017.

Call for Papers

Deadline for submissions: 15 February 2017

Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2017

Participants are invited to submit abstracts on any topic of merit addressing at least one of the subjects of the partnering ICA Commissions. The abstracts should be between 200 and 500 words long, written in English and provided as a Word file using this template. A brief biographical note should also be provided at the end of the abstract. Each author, either as sole author or co-author, may only submit one paper proposal; each paper has to be an original contribution that has not been published or presented before.

All submissions must be sent electronically via the online submission system. When submitting, authors will also be asked to indicate their interest to write a full paper after the conference which – if enough authors are interested – will be published in a dedicated conference volume.

Leiden University Libraries and the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography kindly invite you to attend the International Symposium Mapping Asia – Cartographic Encounters between East and West on 15–16 September 2017 in Leiden, Netherlands.

The central theme of the conference is the mutual influence of Western and Asian cartographic traditions. The focus will be on where Western and Asian cartographic history meet. Geographically, the topics will be limited to South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia with special attention to India, China, Japan, Korea and Indonesia.

Topics and questions which will be discussed are:

What defines Asia? The arbitrary borders between Europe and Asia on the map

Asian cartographic traditions

Asian toponomy and cartography

Cartography and intercultural contact

Missionary and colonial cartographies of Asia

Asian cartography in the collections of Leiden University Libraries

Philipp Franz von Siebold and the cartography of Japan

and all papers of merit

During the symposium Leiden University Library will expose several exhibitions. The Asian collections of the special collections are internationally famous. The Bodel Nijenhuis Collection has large numbers of historical VOC maps. The Indonesia collection has many maps of the 19th and 20th century and includes the collections from the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). The Siebold collection contains a lot of Japanese maps and the collection of the Sinology Institute holds several Chinese maps.

The symposium is held within the framework of the Leiden Asia Year. Throughout 2017, Leiden will be the leading center for Asia in terms of research, teaching, collections and expertise. The Leiden Asia Year 2017 was prompted by the building of the Asian Library on the roof of the University Library. The Asian Library will be opened on 14 September 2017. Participants are kindly invited to attend the opening of the Asian Library, the day before the symposium starts.

All chairs and vice-chairs of the ICA commissions and working groups were invited to join an ICA meeting in Vienna on 8–9 November 2015 to plan and discuss their activities for the term 2015–2019. 46 chairs, vice-chairs and members of the executive committee followed the invitation and spent two intensive workshop days at Technische Universität Wien.

27 commissions and 3 working groups were elected for the term 2015–2019 by the ICA General Assembly 2015. We are currently in the process of updating the website to reflect these changes. Also some of the commissions are still preparing or updating their websites. In the meantime, we invite you to have a look at the short “Commissions at a glance” presentations, which the new commissions chairs gave during ICC 2015: